After our late dinner and late night with several beverages we elected to make a much later start today. We met for breakfast and Chris, having brought a small water bottle, filled it with the raspberry purée for later imbibing on the hill.
We took a couple warm up runs and we headed to "Curtis' Powder Field." Summer got a good taste of the appeal of powder and it's nasty side when you fall in it: the amount of work needed to get back up again. Today was a nice cruising day trying to find any last vestiges of untracked snow.
By now it was after two so we decided to try Restaurant Baja Zero again for lunch. I grabbed drinks but Chris got involved in an incident while getting our food. (Chris believes that Chileans, and I would further extrapolate to include the Argentinians, have a smaller zone of personal space compared to North Americans. It might explain some of the lift line chaos.) After having several people butt in front of him in line for food and a guy behind him complaining in Spanish about him being either an American or a German, Chris turned around and tore a strip off him in German. Converstaion in the immediate vicinity, including the kitchen, stopped.
Following lunch, we made our way to the first of two lifts to take us back to my powder field where Chris had buried the bottle of raspberry juice. While waiting in line we experienced the most galling display of assumed privilege any of us had ever seen. A single skier pushed past us and the two groups in front of us to accost a chair for herself. We were left nearly speechless. Even during spring break when Whistler is overrun with the kids from the North Shore mountains I never witnessed such behaviour. Perhaps its a matter of the lift operations team being more assertive or a better merging system.
The event was quickly forgotten as we made our way back to the powder field to recover the raspberry juice. We stopped at a rock outcrop immediately above the drop zone to take some photos. Summer, having unstrapped from her board, was walking towards the rocks when one leg immediately sank down nearly three feet. We managed to pull her out and with a couple of shim stones, managed a decent group shot. After retrieving the bottle of red nectar, Chris attempted another jump off a powder precipice but found the landing area a bit too flat. Summer tracked a bit further downhill, gaining more of an appreciation for the butter-like sensation of riding on powder.
After that, Summer went to catch a run back to the hotel while Chris and I went to take in a few more runs. When I next looked at my watch it was nearly 4:20. We decided to make one last trip up Mirador and take the Retorno route back to the Hotel.
That night we decided to brave the international buffet in our hotel's restaurant. The theme was Asian but wasn't executed very well. Chris had a tasty bird drumstick but we all passed on the mashed potatoes. From there we went to the pub upstairs and over a few rounds of beer played a single game of pool that lasted nearly an hour. Yes, the three of us all sucked that badly. After finally sinking the eight ball, we moved back to a table and were joined by two guys, we believe both former military: one, currently in the Air Force and working as a refuelling tanker plane pilot and the other, in private industry as a corporate security consultant. We all chatted a bit and left around 1:00 or 1:30, agreeing to another late breakfast.
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